On Wed, 2002-11-06 at 09:55, Jay Blanchard wrote: > [snip] > Pillar Software should be allowed to charge some clients for > support...and hell...look at MYSQL!! That is a great example....MySQL > is free...or is it? That company has like 65 employees! So they are > making money some how! > [/snip] > > Excellent Point! So maybe we should ask some business guru at MySQL to be > our mentor? Anyone ever considered that?
I think the problem is one of timing, at the very least. There are only a handful of quality open source databases, each with a specific niche. When MySQL started to take off, what were your options if you had little or no money? Postgres? (has it's own problems) BDB? mSQL? Really, there wasn't much. For all it's faults, MySQL was about the only decent quality SQL engine at the time. Also, it does one thing. A 'open source' CMS - even a few years ago - had to contend with mindshare between dozens of competitors, all making similar claims and/or inventing new terminology. SQL was fairly well established - you knew what it did more or less. CMS was a fairly new concept, at least in the web world. So, you've got a handful of open source competitors with a focused product in a known market (SQL engines). Compare that with Pillar's BBuilder, our LogiCreate, or dozens of other packages - we're competing against each other for mindshare and marketshare in a market that isn't easily defined, is constantly shifting, and has literally dozens, if not hundreds of companies with millions to spend on marketing. To top if off, even the big boys are realizing there's not much left in the 'enterprise' market, and are more aggressively targetting the small and midsize markets. I think looking at MySQL's success and determining how to apply that to most CMS vendors will be largely time ill spent. Zope may be a better player to look at, if only because of the similarities between Zope and a CMS (it's closer than MySQL anyway) :) Michael Kimsal http://www.logicreate.com 734-480-9961 -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
